inFAMOUS: Rebellion
by Zivalene
Summary: The plague is spreading rapidly and Cole tirelessly continues his mission to accelerate the evolution of humanity. As his troupe of Conduits grows in numbers he is reunited with his younger brother who believes that there is still another way to save the world. Will Cole be able to keep order of the Conduits when their ideals clash? Post inFAMOUS 2 evil ending. Lots of OC Conduits.
1. Chapter 1

_I live! Sorry if this wasn't the update anyone was hoping for, but hopefully someone will appreciate my time with this. I came up with this idea playing the evil side of inFAMOUS 2 and thought I could come up with something that combined a continuation of the evil ending and the small tidbit that Cole had a younger brother. I'm trying to make this seem as likely as possible to come out of the inFAMOUS series. There are plenty of Conduit OCs to explore, so I hope everyone enjoys reading this!_

_Also! I am try to decide whether or not to include **Karma Choices** in the story! If I do, throughout the story I will mark where the characters are faced with a choice and you guys get to pick what their actions will be! In the post-author's note I will list the choices and you guys can send me your decision in a PM, which will be the one shown in the following chapter based on majority demand. Don't worry if your choice isn't the most popular, at the end of the story, I will add extra chapters with those left out choices. I will also mark which chapter is considered canon to my story!_

_If you are a member of , I have put up a poll on my profile to see how many of you would like this idea to be put incorporated into the story! So help me out and go vote!_

* * *

InFAMOUS: Rebellion

Chapter 1

Together they marched, the near three hundred of them; not fit to be an entire army but powerful enough to overtake any adversary. Each one as strong as five men, maybe more.

Together they marched, across the wastelands they had created and across the lush, green fields they would soon reduce to nothing. As was their mission.

They were a troupe of destruction, with a single ringleader more powerful than all of them combined. Most of them watched and followed in the back, empty without thought, only acting when told to.

Then there were the few that stood out, above the crowd, alongside their leader. They were not stronger than the others, more hand-chosen by _him_, trustworthy and loyal. Maybe he simply sensed something more.

There was one with cotton blond hair that marched near the front, then the back, and on the side all at once. One second he was beside the leader, then he was near the peons all in the blink of an eye. "Rush" he had decided to call himself, as he had been given the spontaneous power of teleportation.

The next was a rugged dark haired man with a strong build. His face was solid and stern, yet had a sense of humility. He remained at his leader's side, obedient like a dog. In fact, he _was_ a dog. But he was also a feline of all types, all kinds of aviary and rodent creatures, as well as quadrupeds large and small. Richard was a shape-shifter, an Animagous, able to change form at will into any animal. Because of his dark appearance and the nature of his powers Rush had called him "Morpheus", something that he just seemed to jumble together in his head just because it sounded "cool and bad ass" he said.

The man behind Richard eyed him viciously, also sporting dark hair. The difference was he was clean-shaven and was donned in a tattered police officer uniform. the badge on his chest read "Davis", as in "Torrin Davis" or "Torrent" as Rush had teasingly named him. His power was the ability to control and produce water. And with those powers he had often stared into the distance day-dreaming of one day righting the wrong he had been thrust into.

At his side was a young girl, no older than nine or ten years old. Her expression was timid yet at the same time indifferent. Torrin occasionally slipped his adult hand into her tiny fingers, where they would stay for only a moment until she slipped free, as if to say she need not be babied. Her name was Julia Abrahams, and as young as she seemed, her shoulders carried a heavy load. Her power was the ability to manipulate plants and affect their growth, and was given the name "Florina" affectionately by Rush. And although she was one of the first to become part of the group, she still had some blossoming to do.

At the front, together with Richard, was a woman with skin as pale and cold as death. Her hair had been stained blue from its original black tone, and her arms were frozen over, chilling the air around into a visible frosty mist. Lucy Kuo, his right-hand and most trusted of all, had been with the leader long before she had gruesomely and painfully obtained her cryokinetic powers. As she had once been human, she had also once been noble, working for the greater good and putting people before herself. Now she found herself on the side of massive death and murder, and still in her mind was the righteous duty she had always swore to do.

And finally, at the front of all fronts, the shepherd of the flock. The ringleader of the circus of humanity's evolution. Cole MacGrath, the Electric Man, or so he had once been called. He was the first to be given powers, the first to be granted the gift of evolution, for one reason only; to save the world.

His destiny had come in the form of a man named Kessler, warning him of a monster—a Beast—intent of destroying the world. And only Cole could stop it.

And at the end of his destiny he found a threat greater than the Beast—The plague, an epidemic caused by the Ray Sphere, the object that had given Cole his powers. In the span of a month the plague had already spread to over a fourth of the United States, leaving no living being in its wake.

At the time of Cole's fated battle, he came to learn a new truth. The Beast was not a harbinger of death as he had believed, but a savior and an old friend, John White. He was able to save the few from the plague that could be given powers, but everyone else...most...would die.

Cole had made his choice to abandon his destiny and fight for what he believed was right. In the war that resulted many died and a whole city fell. One of his former allies, Nix, a Conduit with the power over napalm and fire, stood against him. She had always been a rough-and-tumble every-man-for-himself type. And in the end she had put that behind her for the greater good. But Cole had easily overtook her, and electrocuted her with his Amp trapping her by the neck.

And if that wasn't enough, there was Zeke, Cole's best friend...like a brother to him, who had once struggled between knowing the difference of right and wrong then fought as humanity's last hope. But he knew he had no chance, no hope of killing Cole. He was a Conduit. He jumped off of tall buildings for _fun, _took a whole arsenal of bullets every day, and never ended the day with so much as a scratch.

Cole only stood, knowing that perspective is what drove all of it, as Zeke lifted his pistol and fired a shot right into his heart.

The bullet didn't penetrate his chest. It only felt like a small sharp sting. That was Zeke's free shot. Every other attempt after was violently ended by a bolt of lighting. And by the third try, he was dead. Ended by his best friend's hand.

But Cole had learned that some sacrifices had to be made for the greater good, whichever method or way it needed to be achieved.

In the end, John had given up, tired of the death and killing, and proceeded to pass his immense powers onto Cole, to finish what they had started.

Now, here he was, the Electric Man now the Beast—the very creature he had been given powers to defeat—starting a new destiny to save the world his own way. To speed up the evolution he was meant to prevent, sacrifice the majority for the few that had a chance to live.

And each one he saved he brought with him, to protect them, like a shepherd and his flock of sheep. Already the humans had sent in the army, the air force, the navy. They had yet to learn that machinery blew up or stalled with a single lightning bolt. Even though their main target was him, he knew he had to be responsible for the ones he brought up.

Cole stopped on a grassy knoll, the herd stopping with him. Ahead was a fairly large city, unsuspecting that its end was upon it. At the same time there was hopefully a new beginning like a diamond in the rough.

He turned to his flock, their eyes drifted upwards into the red fires that were once his reassuring blue eyes, corrupted by the Beast.

"I need all the newest Conduits, front and center." He spoke loud and clear, with the tone of a stern leader.

Slowly, one by one, four people shuffled out from the crowd. Their faces were scared and unsure, like a child when a teacher wants to talk to them after class. They lined up in an almost straight line and stared nervously at him.

Cole looked between them, seemingly measuring them up. Then he took a few steps and stopped in front of the first one on the right and lifted his hand. The man flinched and closed his eyes, assuming he was about to be fried by his master's wrath. Then he felt a surprisingly soft touch on his forehead before feeling unusually dizzy.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Cole's skeleton standing before him, with an intense yellow gleam shining within his breast. This took him aback, causing him to jump a bit in shock.

Cole then moved from one Conduit to the next, placing his fingers gently on their foreheads channeling some vibrant energy into their bodies and releasing a red mist. Once he had attended to the remaining Conduits, returned to the sides of Kuo and Richard, then waited a moment for the four to find a comfortable medium of balance.

"Each of you now have the power to see the plague—the effects of ray field energy on the body," Cole explained. "Most of what you will see in the humans is red. That is the plague, inflaming their organs and killing them. But what you see now, in us, is a tint of yellow. That is the gene that makes you a Conduit, gives you powers."

The four looked around. Skeletons surrounded them, replacing all living things, but so did that bright golden glow in all of them. Even in themselves.

Cole continued. "Once we get into the city, every single one of you needs to look for more potential Conduits. There won't be very many, three or four if we're lucky. When I set off the blast, you'll need to stay with them and keep them safe; buildings will be falling, sinkholes opening in the streets, everything. After that you need to report back to Kuo as soon as possible and then we'll get going again."

Many within the herd shuffled their weight uncomfortably, some nodded in bravery while others seemed very unsettled and nervous.

"If anyone has any questions, take them up with someone who's been here a while." With that, Cole turned on his heel, intent on moving on quickly. Their goal was forever getting farther and farther away, no matter how many people they saved. There was no such thing as wasted time in the herd. They were always moving, pure nomads.

When the newest four didn't start moving along with the rest of the group, Rush turned and shouted "Come on, newbies! This gig is a team effort." With that they began to walk slowly without will.

Rush then teleported next to Kuo. "Say, Lucy-lou, you ever get tired of the same thing day in and day out? Doesn't it get under your skin sometimes?"

"There's no point in complaining, Rush," she said with a hint of annoyance. Kuo didn't enjoy Rush's spontaneous teleportation, especially when he appeared beside her without announcement.

"I'm not complaining," he answered lightly. "If it wasn't for you guys I wouldn't be here right now. It's just...everyday, he turns more people into dust. Watching all those people die, it can do crazy stuff to your brain, y'know?"

Now she turned her head towards him and looked at him with cold eyes. "What I know is that if Cole didn't do this, the whole country would be dead. Maybe the whole world. As long as there are a few alive, it's not a total loss. And you know Cole would say the same thing."

Rush only looked forward, trying to find another reason to open his mouth, but finding none. Kuo was stubborn and headstrong, she wouldn't leave room in her mind for doubt that what they were doing was right.

Cole's arms began to emit crimson threads of electricity, and slowly the sun was blocked out by the dark clouds. They formed quickly as he agitated the electrons in their atoms. Soon the sky broke into a cacophony of thunder and strobes of lightning with an ominous scarlet hue. This was his warning to the humans, the declaration of war. The thunder was the trumpets and the lightning was the flares.

But there was a more practical reason for the storm than simply instilling fear. But this was a secret he only trusted to Kuo. Not even Richard, the first Conduit to join their small group, knew the full purpose of the storm.

All they needed to know was it was all part of the routine. Everything had a purpose and meaning. Nothing was just for show.

* * *

Dylan sat on the couch, flipping through the television channels in a bored, slow pace. There was nothing to watch; there hadn't been for a few days now. Every channel was covered with static or invaded by those colorful bars with the annoying high-pitched sound.

And it wasn't because the TV was fifteen years old and still ran on cable. Every TV in the city was down. Every time Dylan went out for a bike ride he'd hear people complaining about missing their favorite Sunday-night drama or missing the latest news.

Even the radios went silent.

There was supposed to be a storm—a hurricane or something—moving through the area soon. It was unusual for a hurricane to head north into the New England states rather than West into the Gulf of Mexico but every now and then something slipped off course. Everyone just assumed they'd have their satellite and cable back once it blew through.

Then again, Dylan didn't care if the news was out. He stopped keeping track once they started talking about some terrorist wacko blowing up six blocks of Empire City with a bomb. All they ever talked about was the war and terrorists trying to kill Americans, now they found something else to base every story off of. The only difference is that they finally hit home.

A few weeks later he heard people talking about how the terrorist had electric superpowers. He only laughed, wondering how professional grown adults could believe in the stupidest rumor ever. It wasn't even as solid as the rumors of the world ending that sprouted up every few years.

Now with the blackout there was some peace and sanity. However the internet still worked to some extent. Most days it worked but most websites had been offline with that 404 error popping up. The email service Dylan used still worked and that was all he needed.

The young man sighed and ran his fingers through the tuft of black hair on his head. He stood and made his way behind the couch to the small desk with a laptop sitting on it. He opened the screen and sat in the wicker chair as the computer came to life.

When it awoke it was already on the homepage of his e-mail service. His account had already been logged out due to maintenance. He started type in his user name and password but then paused when he considered that no one ever sent him a message on that account. It was a waste of cyberspace.

He deleted each area then paused for an even longer moment before entering the information for an account he had not used for months. He had stopped using it once he ran away from home with his best friend Mitchel. On the day they escaped, Mitch's older brother Brian was heading home to Revere City in Massachusetts and they managed to convince him to take them with him.

Now the three of them lived together in Brian's apartment. Brian managed to scrap together enough money to support them for the month by working at the local pizza parlor. Mitch helped out a little, getting minimum wage working at a fast-food restaurant. Dylan, however, had refused to work because he had dropped out of high-school and therefore had no proof of education, which also prevented him from obtaining a driver's license until he was eighteen.

When the e-mail account finally loaded there were over fifty messages that had been waiting for him since he left home. Most of them were from his father, and each of them were angry and enraged.

He proceeded to call Dylan many vulgar names as well as ungrateful and worthless and a waste of space. He then started to mention his mother, who had divorced his father sometime before Dylan had decided to leave, saying that he could live without both of them and life would be much easier.

In the final batch of messages he began to beg for Dylan to come home and bring his older brother with him who had also vanished after his graduation.

This same attitude was exactly why he had left. With his brother still there he didn't care how his father treated him as long as there was someone else there for him. Once he left, Dylan became the punching bag, and so did his mother. She eventually left as well, but lost the court case for possession of Dylan, leaving him stuck alone with his father, until finally he couldn't take it anymore and followed suit.

Dylan then selected all of the messages and deleted them. He knew that they were waiting for him all this time. Only now did he decide to face them.

He saw that the time had just passed three o'clock. Mitch had been in the hospital for the past week with some sort of virus and his condition continued to worsen. Visiting hours had just started for the patients in the intense care unit.

He picked up the land line phone and dialed the number to his room. After a few rings the phone was answered.

"Hello?" Mitchel's voice was weak and sickly, barely above a whisper.

"Hey, Mitch," Dylan replied. "Are you scheduled for any scans today?"

"Not until four-thirty. They're going to try an MRI." He coughed a few times.

"Great. I'm on my way." Dylan started to put the phone down from his ear.

"Actually, man," Mitch said quickly," I don't want you coming today."

"What? Why not?"

"Have you seen the sky? That storm is right over our heads."

"I don't care," the other said smugly. "I can get there way before it picks up."

"Come on, D..."

"I'm heading out the door, Mitch. I'll be there in a bit."

Dylan hung up and closed the laptop into its quiet slumber. He made his way out the door, locking it behind himself, and wheeled his bicycle onto the sidewalk from the porch.

As he rode down the street and turned onto a populated cross-section, he noticed that the sky was darkened into an evil group of storm clouds. Lightning struck once or twice every few seconds and Dylan swore it flashed red. He didn't think much of it as he was aware that lightning could appear almost any color depending on the weather conditions—purple on a normal day and orange when off-shore.

Soon he came into the downtown area, where traffic rushed by quickly in larger numbers. He continuously looked about himself to make sure someone hadn't lost their control on a four-ton vehicle, as more accidents tended to happen in a storm. Then he realized that there was no sign of rainfall. There were no puddles on the sidewalk or in the gutters, nor had it started to sprinkle tiny raindrops and there wasn't even the slightest tinge of humidity.

Now Dylan began to wonder if this was a hurricane or any off-shore storm at all. It was strange, supernatural, even. Certainly he wasn't the only one who noticed this. There must have been some people high-strung about it.

He kept his eyes forward, watching the on-coming traffic beside him cautiously.

Then he heard the cawing screech of a bird overhead. A crow had latched onto his hood, tugging the collar of his jacket against his throat. Dylan shooed it away with his hand, thinking that he had simply come into the boundaries of a very terrestrial bird's home.

He reconsidered when the bird came back for seconds, this time pulling his hood over his eyes, blocking his sight. Birds didn't chase people down an entire block if they only came too close to a tree.

The animals were going insane quicker than he expected the humans to.

"Get off me, you stupid bird!"

He struggled again to blindly swipe it away. Then came a blare of sound in his path. The crow fluttered away as Dylan pulled his hood back, only to find a semi barreling towards him. He couldn't swerve right as there was another car beside the humongous steel death-trap, leaving the same lack of options.

He leaned to the left in a desperate attempt to return to the sidewalk. His front wheel jammed into the crevice of a sewage drain, the force of the sudden stop ejected him from his seat and onto the pavement of the sidewalk. The palms of his hands screamed in pain as he tried to catch his fall, the concrete ripping some skin from them, and his elbows rang in agony as he knocked them against the ground.

Dylan seethed and laid flat on the ground. He didn't want to move, he had enough moving for a moment. His heart was racing and adrenaline rushed through his veins. He had managed to cheat death and end up with only skinned hands and elbows all because of a very angry bird.

Other cars passed by since the near-collision. Not one of them stopped to check on him as they were supposed to. And as for his bike, it was a tangled mess of aluminum framing twisted into the vague shape of a pretzel.

Although, someone did eventually come to his aid—or something, rather. He felt hot air snorting onto the crown of his head. When he lifted his eyes he found a husky Labrador Retriever sniffing him as if checking to see if he was okay and began wagging its tail as Dylan continued to move and look the dog over.

It was not strange to see an alley-dog in this part of town and dogs were naturally friendly unless given a reason to fear humans. This one seemed well mannered enough as it let Dylan pet it on the head while dazedly moaning "Good boy..." and "Nice dog...".

But when he attempted to scrape himself off the ground, the dog changed its colors and growled while baring its teeth at him. Dylan, taken aback by this, eased back into the position he had fallen into. All the animals were acting weird. Was it because of the weather? Or maybe this dog really was scared of Dylan after all.

Even stranger was the next thing the dog did—lowering its front while keeping its rear in the air as if it wanted to play, but instead covered it's eyes and muzzle with it's paws as if hiding its vision from something. Dylan stared at the lab, nearly on the edge of laughing since it seemed to be trying to communicate with him, playing a game of charades. The canine lifted a paw and a curious ear to see if Dylan had mirrored its pose. When it saw he did not, it whimpered and resumed its pantomime.

When Dylan stifled a laugh, a much louder noise muted his sound. It was louder than a Bowing 7-47 on a landing approach flying just overhead, maybe louder then a sonic boom. The concussion wave of the eruption shattered windows and rocked the very earth he touched. And with the sound came a light, a bright light in the form of a swirling blue dome, racing to encase the entire city from downtown.

And even with all of this, the Labrador seemed completely ignorant to the chaos. It wasn't even shaking in fear. It just held it's pose as it had before, as if it knew the explosion was going to happen.

Dylan's jaw dropped, heart stopped and his eyes propped open in fear. '_A bomb', _he thought, _like the one in Empire.'_ The terrorists had struck again. What would happen now? Would he die along with the rest of the city? Or would a few be spared and left to claw and fight to survive in the scrap that remained?

He didn't have enough time to finish even this thought. He cowered and bowed his head into his arms as the light swallowed him whole.


	2. Chapter 2

At last, chapter 2! Sorry for the long wait, working with so many original characters and trying to get every side of the story straight takes a while. No Karma Choices yet, but I will find some place to put them in the next chapter hopefully.  
Please Read, Write and Review. And as always, enjoy.

* * *

**Chapter 2**

The light had faded and vision returned to Richard's eyes. The city around him was scarred and burned. Trees had splintered if not fallen over completely, weaker structures were reduced to rubble and those left standing had been damaged beyond recognition. Some cars were still lazily rolling into walls and other cars that were barreling into anything they could possibly careen into.

Every living thing that was not worthy enough to be granted powers had evaporated into dust. Everyone in his sight had been vaporized, no one remained.

No one except for the kid unconscious at his feet. The energy from the blast seeped from his body, smoke of some sort rose from his skin as if he had been scotched with a wall of flames. Each person that once stood in the area were now part of him, broken down into pure neuroelectric energy and fed to the sleeping Conduit gene inside him. Richard could see with his enhanced eyes that the dim yellow light in his chest was now bursting with radiance, however the abilities that would manifest would remain hidden until they were ready to appear.

Aside from being a Conduit, there was something strange about him. His sense of smell as a dog was extraordinarily better than his normal human sense and with it the ability to associate one smell with another. His dog mind itched with familiarity, recognizing the scent of the boy with someone else. Who it was, he could not discern.

He shook his curiosity away and continue on with the task at hand.

He returned to his human form, rugged and toned with noticeable strength and scooped the young Conduit into his arms. He felt for a pulse and watched for his breathing, a precaution Cole generally encouraged in case of severe stress on the new Conduits' bodies. His heart beat was calm and his chest rose and fell slowly, peacefully. When he awoke, he would be startled and scared as most new associates were. The more calm he was in the sleeping stage, the better it would be when he eventually returned to reality.

Satisfied, Richard lifted Dylan onto his back before shifting his shape into a large, muscular horse. The young man's body fell hung limp across his back, his hands hanging off both sides of his neck. He turned and raced off toward the center of the city where Cole had emitted the Blast.

He sprinted as fast as his sturdy legs would carry him, being careful not to let Dylan slip off of his back. He jumped over fallen lamp posts and trees, dodged out of control cars without their drivers and slipped just beneath falling debris. The explosion had set fire to electrical objects such as pylons, generators and car batteries, causing many smaller explosions in Richard's path.

Another car barreled at him, taking out a fire hydrant on the side of the road before blocking his path as it collided with the wall of a video rental store. Although he managed to avoid all of this perilous death, the powerful stream from the hydrants soaked him and his unconscious rider as he went by.

The Conduit craned his massive neck to peek at Dylan, whose clothes and hair to his skin as he bounced like a stiff rag doll and Richard's soggy main slapped him in the face. It was when he felt his arm twitch against his shoulder-blade and saw his eyebrows crease that Richard paid close attention.

He felt the ground begin to tremble beneath his hooves and he turned his eyes back forward to watch for any mayhem that may ensue. The tremor started small, then grew violent enough to visibly shake the taller building whose foundations had started to crumble. Eventually they had become so vehement that the streets and sidewalks had began to crack and break apart.

This was not normal when they sieged a city. The wayward cars, fires, falling buildings and explosions were a usual hazard during retrieval, but not earthquakes. The only things that changed were the Conduits that had been activated and the location, and New England wasn't exactly famous for unstable earth activity.

The only explanation was that Dylan's powers were unstable, as was the case with many new Conduits. Their powers were nearly impossible to predict how and when they would manifest. Some powers appeared immediate upon being activated and others would take anywhere from one to three days. Whatever his powers were, they were instantaneous and very dangerous in their uncontrolled state.

As he was considering this he heard another thunderous '_bang'_. Another hydrant had erupted into an enormous water spout. Nothing had collided water main. Soon, more hydrants began to burst down the road, flooding the street.

Now the cracks were getting bigger, forcing Richard to jump more hurdles than just vehicles and signs. His hooves slipped on the slick concrete and loose gravel as he sprinted through the wet roads.

Another tremor shock the ground. The rendezvous wasn't much farther now, just a few blocks ahead in the park. He cleared another obstacle, soaring with grace through the air. It was the landing was much less than graceful.

His back leg landed inside of a crack that was just large enough to get his hoof into. Pain erupted through his leg as he tumbled to the ground, trapped by earth and enormous agony. Dylan's still body was flung from his back onto the weakening road a few feet away.

Despite the rage of pain, Richard struggled to free his back leg. It was wedged tight in the ground, stressing the fracture in his tibia. When he couldn't pull himself loose he changed back to his human form in hopes his foot would be small enough to pull out. With some effort and splitting pain he managed to wiggle the sole of his shoe out of the hole.

Then he challenged himself to crawl towards Dylan and somehow manage to deliver him safely to the rest of the pack. In the middle of his slow stagger there came on more sound he didn't want to hear—the sound of something akin to a rock slide. Looking up that was exactly what he found. A building five stories high had begun to collapse, falling in and over itself, seeming to eat itself. The force of the tons and tons of concrete and metal beams aggravated the earth even more, and Richard found himself and Dylan swallowed by a sinkhole, with the crumbled building serving as the cap to the surface.

* * *

"Everyone stick together and stay calm," Cole addressed his cowering group of Conduits. "The earthquake will pass, give it time."

The Conduits who had just completed their first rescue stayed beside the ones they had saved, keeping track of their health and any hazards from the tremors. Each Conduit was tasked with being responsible for their rescue case until they could take care of themselves, thus it was best to be nearby when they awoke. So far only a few had come to life, frightened and hysterical, being calmed by their rescuers.

"Cole," Kuo approached him after watching a woman struggle with her handler in fear. "This is putting them under too much stress when they wake up. We need to move on before this gets out of hand."

"Yeah, maybe you're right. There probably won't be much left to salvage by the time we're ready." He searched over his flock before calling Rush to his side.

"What'cha need, Boss?"

"Take a quick head-count. Ask every veteran if they brought someone back. We need to head out, now."

"Got it." The blond-haired Conduit disappeared in a cloud of smoke and reappeared in random locations around the camp.

"Hold it, MacGrath," Torrin stood up from a group of injured Conduits and marched up to him. "They expect us to just up and leave after you nearly kill half of us with our earthquake? What do you expect us to live off of for the next week or so?"

"It's not his fault-"

"Why don't you let him defend himself, Miss Kuo?"

"Because I don't have to explain myself to you," Cole answered sternly. "You're always so quick to judge me and start trouble when the only thing keeping you here is that Julia still needs you to help her grow our food and you're our source of water."

Torrin creased his eye brows and stood silently, defeated.

"Now ask me again; What do I expect you to live off of?"

The electric man stared him down, but the officer did not waver. The only movement between the two was that the latter clinched his fist in anger.

"Boss!"

In a sudden burst of air Rushed appeared between them, startling the two men.

"Damn it, Eddy." Cole scolded him more for interrupting rather than surprising him.

Normally Rush would get aggravated for being called by his real name, but in this case he let it slide.

"It's Morpheus, Boss. He's the only one still out there."

This news took Cole by vague surprise. Richard was normally the first one back, after Rush of course, being able to find Conduits quickly in a short distance from the Blast. The dangers of post-Blast retrieval were nothing new to him as he was the very first to be recruited. But with the added dangers of a Conduit's out of control powers were likely to slow him down or put him in a life-threatening situation.

Using his transcended powers Cole called out to Richard telepathically. However his mind did not answer back. When this failed, he sent out an extrasensory pulse laced with electromagnetic energy to locate the missing Conduit. The signal of his energy came back weak and still, however Cole could sense a second source of energy, strong and vibrant. Along with this pulse came the information of just how much danger he and his rescued Conduit were in. They were trapped in a sinkhole with, literally, and entire building on top of them. The street had flooded, weakening the integrity of the underground pipes and buildings. If Cole did not take action now they would both drown or be crushed when the tremors brought the rest of the building crashing down to fill the hole.

"Richard's trapped underground with the Conduit that's shaking things up," he reported to Kuo. "The water main is busted, they're gonna drown if we don't hurry."

"Whoa, whoa," she stopped him mid-stride," You're going to electrocute them if you do this by yourself. Take me and Torrin with you at least."

"I was already planning on it," he complied. "The building that's trapping them could go at any minute, I'm gonna need as much help as I can get."

"In that case I'm going to get started," Kuo nodded dutifully. "Which way?"

"A block or two that way," Cole pointed to the North, "You can't miss it."

With that, Lucy Kuo evaporated into an icy mist and trailed away in the direction of his finger.

Cole turned to Rush and Torrin, "I'll need your help, too—_both_ of you." He gave Torrin a glare. "Rush, take Torrin with you. He'll need to keep the water away from the sinkhole. Then teleport in and check on them, but don't stick around too long."

Torrin nodded with obvious reluctance.

"You got it, Boss." Together he and Rush vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Everyone else, start heading out," he announced to the pack. "Wait outside the city where it's safe."

The last of the Conduits scrambled to their feet, flying and running past him to the nearest edge of the city, carrying their new members with them.

Once they were gone and out of sight, Cole dashed off through the ruins of the park. Large crevices had formed in the soft soil, displacing th earth by several feet and tipping trees over.

At the edge of park where grass met concrete he found the street completely submerged in water. Being that his body had been anatomically redesigned to absorb and discharge electricity, his body shorted out in water. However a little ankle-high water wouldn't hurt him—not nearly as much as anyone else in the water. However, too much of it and he would essentially die.

Conducting the electricity in his body into his arm, he focused it and shot out a beam of lightning and attached it to the roof of the building ahead of him. He was then lifted off the ground, pulling himself with the tether onto the top of the building, bypassing the flooded streets completely.

Now, crossing the gaps between buildings at the high points of the city, he was able to see the full extent of the damage he was facing. Kuo had already started freezing the ruptured water pipes, slowing the spread of the flood as quickly as she could. However, her fixes would not last long before bursting again from the contained pressure.

Torrin had gone to work preventing any more water leaking into the sinkhole by evaporating as much as he could in a full circumference around himself. Any amount that he could not do so in time he formed into a wall of water that continued to grow with each failure of Kuo's ice caps.

Once Cole came upon the downed building he gave a great leap towards the rubble with the assistance of static propulsion from his hands. He managed to land softly on the pile of slabs that endangered Richard's and his Conduit's life.

Then he got started on the most important part—getting those two to safety. Throwing his arms out to his side he released a pulse of electromagnetic energy and lifted a large piece of concrete and dry wall before tossing it as far away as the amassed kinetic energy could propel it. As soon as one slab left his grip, he picked up another and sent it flying as well. He intended to repeat this until there was enough debris cleared to extract the two Conduits trapped underneath.

Suddenly in a cloud of smoke and a cacophony of wheezes, Rush appeared covered in dust and dirt. "Morpheus is conscious, but it's way too dark to see and he says that they're pinned down."

"Help me clear this stuff out of the way," Cole commanded without distracting himself too much from the job at hand. "I don't want you starting a landslide trying to move something you can't see."

Without a reply this time he disappeared and reappeared teleporting as many boulders and girders as fast as he could away from the mound of debris.

Each time Rush returned to fetch another piece Cole watched to see if any pieces he removed would potentially trigger a chain reaction to allow the rest of the building to come crashing down.

At the same time he kept an eye on Torrin, who possessed the power to control the very element that could kill him in an instant. Ever since the day he joined the group he had harbored an obvious vendetta towards Cole, and that alone made him a threat. So far he had only lashed out with words and protests, but Cole never let his guard down when in the officer's presence. He suspected that one day he would suddenly find enough courage to turn his anger into a physical attack, and Cole did not want to be caught unaware when this happened.

After many pieces of the building had been ejected and removed, he and Rush had managed to thin the amount of rubble to a slim few layers above the hole. A couple more remnants of demolished wall and they'd be able to extract the trapped Conduits. However, Cole could see that Rush was beginning to wear down from the constant use of his powers. As much as the electric man wanted to deny it, he too was starting to tire. The humidity from Torrin's process of heating the surrounding water to evaporate it had started to make them sweat harder than they already had been from exerting their bodies. All the water that had accumulated had formed a wall of water taller than the two exhausted Conduits staked together.

But they were almost done, they could hold out for a few more rounds of their powers. Even if Rush failed to continue, Cole could still carry both of their weight for a little longer. That is if his diminishing electricity reserves didn't run dry first.

As he turned to toss another slab, there came a scuffle from behind him and suddenly the wall of water came pouring down. The electric man panicked and whirled around and focused the electricity in his arms, ready to fire upon the hydrokinetic cop. The water halted as he turned to find Torrin scrambling to return defensive control of his powers toward Cole and Rush sprawled on the ground behind him.

From Cole's point of view, Torrin had forced Rush to the ground and was now about to attack him as well. Now the two were at a stand off and, being aware of his combat training, Torrin would attempt to defend himself swiftly and accurately as soon as Cole even so much as twitched.

Yet Cole had every cautionary fiber of his being telling him to strike first, as if Torrin decided to converge the barrier on him, he would be critically injured or even killed. After all, how would he stop a lightning bolt that travels faster than the human eye can blink?

By now Kuo had already hurried over to try and handle the situation by surprisingly aiming at _both_ of the feuding Conduits. To this, Torrin tensed up and prepared himself to defend against the sudden outbreak of lightning of ice.

"Both of you stand down unless you want to be frostbitten," Kuo threatened.

Cole knew this was only a bluff, that she would never harm him and the warning was mostly for Torrin. She was the only one besides himself that knew about his weakness to water and Torrin was the last person that needed to know.

"Guys! Guys hold up!" Rush jumped to his feet and placed himself in the center of the stand off. "Don't shoot! I knocked Torrent over on accident and made him drop the ball! It was all my bad, so how about everyone just calms down, huh?"

Cole looked from Rush to Torrin, narrowed his eyes and refused to falter.

"An officer doesn't draw his gun unless his life is threatened," Torrin stated. "Guess who raised their gun first." As he said this he returned the glare given to him by Cole.

"Cole..." Kuo gave him a stern look as to tell him to surrender. Her warning came fairly, as an officer of the law would not lower their firearm until the threat was nullified.

The man looked to her, finding a sense of confidence in her eyes. Shifting to the surrounding water he felt uneasy and insecure.

After returning to Kuo he relaxed, reluctantly quelling the electricity in his body. Kuo then did the same. Finally, Torrin also loosened himself into a calm but alert disposition.

The four of them looked between each other, Rush appeared obviously relieved. However Cole felt much the opposite. In his hasty misunderstanding he had given Torrin a glimpse of his fear. With that clue, that hint of an advantage, he felt a sense of danger that he had been without since he became the Beast. Even when the humans sent the Army, the Air Force and the Navy, he alone barely needed to lift a finger and his Conduits could sleep soundly knowing they were safe. In reality the greatest threat to him was one of his own flock.

"Get back to work," he said without prefix. He turned and started to take a step. "We've wasted enough-"

"AHHhhh!"

"Kuo!"

Suddenly her body erupted into uncontrollable spasms, her skin laced with dancing threads of lightning

Cole moved with intense urgency, grabbing her by the arm and jerking her into his arms on the driest point of the mound of debris, where she collapsed motionless into his grasp. The shaking in her small, cold wrists had been violent enough to make his forearm ache.

He glanced to where she had been standing, in a spot that was just wet enough to get the cuff of her pants soggy. When he looked back to his own spot he found the fading ripples of the step that had electrocuted her. It was a puddle of water only deep enough to dampen the sole of his shoe, but it was enough to conduct over twenty-thousand volts of electricity into her heart.

"What happened?!" Rush flew to his side. "Is she dead?"

The electric man felt for a pulse with his thumb on her wrist and brought his ear to her chest as he kneeled down to balance her on his knee.

"Her heart's out of rhythm, but I think I can get it in step again." He placed his hand lightly beneath her left clavicle and removed any left over electricity from her body that she did not need before outputting a small pulse directly to her heart.

"Says the one who can't control his powers," Torrin hissed.

Cole's own heart gave a strong thump as he bared his eyes down upon him. "Last I checked you were supposed to be keeping the water _away_ from the hole. If Kuo or Richard die, you're the one under the bus."

He gave one more pulse to resuscitate her heart as Torrin opened his mouth to continue the argument.

However there came an alarming sound that kept him silent, the sound of thousands of rocks tumbling and sliding over each other.

The earth seemed to give one big lurch as the building they hand been racing again began to crumble once more. The four of them would be buried in a matter of seconds with the already trapped two.

Cole reacted faster than Rush thought to teleport or for even Torrin to choose flight over fight. All he had to do was flip a switch somewhere in his body, that turned him from "powerful" to "most powerful of all". With this new potential he sent a field of distortion from his hand, stopping all gravity and reversing the Earth's pull.

The Conduits found themselves slowly floating upwards towards the sky, along with the pieces of building that had started to fall. The Beast held firmly onto Kuo as her released thin tethers of pure Ray Field energy from his body and attached one to each Conduit. As they rose higher and higher so too did the massive fragments of street and concrete from the sinkhole along with whatever water found its way inside. Finally behind all of that came Richard and his new convert.

The two of them were drenched and covered in dust. Richard had managed to stay conscious despite the obvious pain he was in as the lower half of his leg dangled disgustingly limp in every which way gravity decided to be. The kid however was still soundly asleep in some black void of his mind.

Some thing about the teen made Cole's eyes double back as he released two more safety line. There was something about his hair that was grayed by the particles of dust weaved into it, the shape of his face, high height, his weight. When he finally arrived at the answer his heart-rate took off like a spooked deer and his brows began to sweat for reasons outside of the constant strain the Beast's powers had on his body.

He could feel his powers waning, getting harder to control, and his body started to tire with growing weakness. He sent whatever power he could spare through the tether connecting himself to Rush to amplify his abilities. He could see it in the Conduit's face that he felt refreshed and energized.

"Rush, get us out of here!"

Utilizing the excess energy he had been given, Rush created a field to encase the six Conduits. With a sudden surge they were sucked into a mesh of blurring colors before seeming to stop at serious G-forces, their fellow super-humans crashing into comprehension.

Rush appeared well-balanced on his feet as the others came rather ungracefully. The rest of the flock jumped in shock and rambled in excitement to each other.

"Sorry, folks!" Rush raised his hands. "Sorry for the scare, but we're all here now. Everything's cool."

"Where's Cole," one Conduit asked.

"What do you mean? He's right here." Rush gasped as he turned, not finding Cole nor the new addition to their group anywhere. "Oh God, I must have lost him in the ninth dimension..." he feared under his breath.

"Julia!" Richard's voice erupted above his muttering. "Julia!"

From within the crowd the young girl hurried out to his side.

"Tell your angels to fix my leg, now!" His words made her shrink and take a step back. "...Please," he seethed as kindly as he could.

She nodded with butterflies in her stomach and laced her tiny fingers together. She closed her eyes as if praying to any holy power that would listen.

As she continued to pray, small vines began to germinate from the ground beside his leg. As they grew, they budded leaves and wrapped themselves around the fracture. After a moment Richard could feel his pain subsiding and his leg finding structure.

All the while Torrin had been tending to Kuo, listening to her heart and thrusting his palm onto her sternum. Cole had managed to stable her for the most part, but every now and then he had to stabilize her again.

Rush continued to mutter to himself about how he had lost their leader in some other plain of existence when finally Torrin had enough and turned to him. "Are you going to beat yourself up all day or are you going back to look for him?"

"What," said the other as if he had misheard him.

"He's not in a different dimension, you just left him back where we were. So stop whining and go get him."

Rush raised an eyebrow at him. "Since when do you care about the boss?"

"I don't, I'm just tired of your nonsensical blathering." He turned back to Kuo. "You messed up, Eddy, like you always do. But you never let that stop you from trying again."

The boy smirked at him. "Don't think you can weasel you way out of this one, Torrent. I know you've got a soft spot for the boss in there somewhere." He took a running start, as he always felt he teleported faster when he had momentum. "And the name is "Rush"!"

"Keep your ridiculous nicknames to yourself," the officer shouted back as he vanished into thin air.

When he reappeared in the city he called out to Cole. "Boss! Hey, Boss!" But he did not see him nor did an answer come. It was when he saw the new pile of rubble that he became alarmed. All of the rock that had been hovering above them not tow minutes ago. Rush immediately deduced that his master was buried somewhere in the wreckage.

He made another quick jump to the mountain of concrete and started to remove each boulder one by one as he did before.

"C'mon, Boss, c'mon..." he whimpered between bursts. "You're not gonna let a few hundred tons of rock keep you down, huh?"

He jumped a few more slabs out of the way and shoved any he was strong enough to move.

"If you're still alive in there, let me know with that freaky psychic mind thing you do."

He moved a few more but as he looked back to size up his progress he had barely made a dent. He had only moved ten feet and his arms were already screaming in agony and his back felt like it was on fire. On top of all that his optimism was being pounded into the ground, until finally he collapsed to his knees.

"C'mon, Boss. I know you can hear me... Just give me a sign that you're okay."

Suddenly there came a hot pain in the back of his neck. It felt as if a blood vessel had ruptured just within the lining of his blond hair. Shooting a hand back to the point of pain, Rush didn't feel anything out of the ordinary except for tense muscles and a warm touch.

Looking around he found no one, and when he was convinced that he was alone he pulled himself back together to dig a little bit longer.

* * *

Cole appeared in a roar of flames in front of a small two-story house, falling to his hands as Dylan flopped in front of him. His lungs heaved feeling stabbed and his sides felt split in two as if he had been slit with a knife.

Although he had gained the Beast's powers, his body was still not able to contain the immense power. His body literally strained itself and over clocked to use those powers until finally all this strength was spent. For this reason he only used those abilities to convert more Conduits or in emergency situations.

Only Kuo knew of the price he paid for becoming the Beast, and after every Blast while the rest were out hunting Conduits she would take him to the highest point in the city where he would be most likely struck by a bolt of lightning from the storm he had created.

But now there was no storm. There was no electricity to recharge himself in a ruined city. For now he was overspent and powerless.

In the distance he could hear the low hum of an approaching aircraft, and it was coming up fast.

After catching his breath the stood and took Dylan back into his arms before approaching the house. He had managed to get under the canopy of the front door as an unmanned drone flew above the street. It had seemed to stall and nearly fall out of the sky before righting itself and continuing on it's way. Cole deduced that the enhanced electrical field his body emitted had disabled the computers on board. If the military was around and they noticed the momentary failure, it would not be long before they would be at his heels.

Seeing that there were no cars in the driveway to the separated garage so instead of knocking at the front door he kicked it open. Inside he found no one or anything. All of the living room furniture and kitchen appliances had been tossed to the curb and any decorations were shattered or gone. Compared to any other home it was bare and dusty.

He entered a room on the side of the living space almost astronomically with familiarity. This room was much like the living room and the kitchen—empty and barren. The only things left were the windows and the frame of a bed with a stripped-down mattress. Here, Cole laid Dylan upon the bed.

There he stood gazing upon him. Now that he had the time to look upon him fully, Cole found the time to calculate the reasons behind his frustration and grief.

Then he turned to leave before he could convince himself otherwise.

But he stopped, finding a force to make him stay. All it took was the sound of his name.

"Cole?"

The electric man turned slowly to face him, almost reluctantly.

"What happened," he muttered, "Where am I?"

"_You're_ home," is all Cole replied, stressing the first syllable.

"What?" He looked at him like he had seen a ghost. "You brought me back to New York? No, I don't want to be here. Why did you-"

"Because you were _supposed_ to be here, Dylan!" Cole snapped, tired of his whining. "You're seventeen. You're supposed to be going to school. You're supposed to live _here,_ with Mom and Dad, not in Massachusetts where I found you."

"Like you care," Dylan jumped from the bed. "You left without a word. And it wasn't even a week before Mom left too. So I was here with Dad who dumped all his expectations of you on me."

"I did care," Cole took a step towards him, reminding him who was the older brother. "Where do you think all those checks came from?"

Dylan fell silent for a moment and cowered. "You sent those?"

"No, Santa Clause did," the other shouted sarcastically. "Every month after I got a job I'd send you whatever I could spare from being paid crappy minimum wage so that you could go to college. So that you could be more successful than me." The younger brother was dumbfounded to the point he couldn't speak. "How much of my money did Dad get because you ran away, Dylan?" The other suddenly seemed interested in Cole's shoes. "How much," Cole repeated, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"About four month's worth if you count this month," Dylan answered shaken.

Cole sighed and backed off seeing that he had unsettled his brother more than he had intended. If Dylan had run off four months ago, then it would have been two months before he had gotten his powers. And seeing as how the house was completely empty, their father was either dead or hit the road once his whole family had left him. Besides, what did money mean anymore? The world was in the middle of recreation, and any currency would soon be wasted scraps of paper and precious metals.

Dylan now took the moment to really see his brother for the first time in a year. He looked much more like an adult than he did when he left for college. But much more importantly he seemed darker, a near shadow of the sibling he had grown up with. Cole was always the one that made him feel safe, but now he had not even said one calm word to him after coming together for the first time in so long. He even became violent before so much as a "hello".

His eyes continued to dart between the demonic veins visible on top of his strangely pale skin and the rusted metal object he had tucked between two straps of his backpack. The only thing more disturbing than that were his blood red eyes. They weren't irritated it seemed, but like it had become his natural iris color. To top it all off, he had a deep scar running down his cheek and to his lip with a small gap in the line. And Dylan felt that there was something even more dangerous than his appearance that he couldn't see.

"Cole, what happened to you?"

The older brother found some part of the ceiling to gravitate to. "It's a long story, Dylan. And you're not going to find out any time soon."

He turned to leave again, but this time Dylan was quick enough to grab him by the arm. "Wait, you're leaving me here? _Again_?"

"Oh please, Dylan." Cole rolled his eyes. "What difference would it make? You obviously think you can take care of yourself."

"What the hell is your problem," he snapped. "First I'm almost roadkill, then the city gets bombed by terrorists and finally I wake up to find you trying to desert me two-hundred miles away from where I passed out. What makes you think you can just show up and dump me like trash?"

"Hey, I saved your ass. You're lucky I—"

Cole stopped himself at the sound of a shotgun's hammer going back. He turned and placed himself between his younger sibling and the aggressor, ready to protect him any way possible. But when he saw who was holding the gun, his heart twisted into a knot of anger and some form of sadistic joy.

"Well, if it isn't my two degenerate sons," said their father, a ragged middle-aged man with a feverishly flushed face. He heaved a gruesome cough before clearing his throat and continuing. "I should shoot you for all my money you wasted, Cole. From what I hear I'd be doing the world a favor."

The question of why their father was home in their desolate house with nothing to live off of barely scraped past Dylan's reeling mind. He was much more concerned about the gun pointing directly at himself and his brother.

"Degenerate is a pretty strong word, Dad," Cole replied as he took Dylan's wrist and pulled him closer to his back. "And if you're so in-the-know, you'd know that you're wasting your time with that toy. But you're welcome to try."

The youngest MacGrath stared at his brother in amazement. He was staring down the double barrel of a loaded shotgun held by their anal father and he was actually _provoking_ him to blow his brains out. He had always been an assertive type, but this was taking it a bit too far.

"You'll kill me if I don't kill you first," answered the father grimly.

"I'm not gonna kill you, Old Man. It'd be a waste of energy considering you'll be dead in a few minutes." He focused his special eyes and mused at the glowing red inflammations slowly burning away at him organs. "It started as just an annoying cough, right? After a while every breath felt like a knife cutting you open, you couldn't eat because you'd just puke it all over yourself and every time you went to take a piss you felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer into your groin."

Dear old Dad frowned and took a swallow full of needles. "You bastard."

Dylan looked up to see his brother's face and he saw a pleased gleam in his eyes. He obviously enjoyed pushing his father's buttons. In a way, he too also felt some form of satisfaction in it.

All through his childhood he tried to keep himself as close to Cole as possible when their father was in a bad mood. Whether he was drunk, angry at their mother or absolutely anything else that ticked him off, he would go straight to treating him like dirt. But he never did this to Cole except when he would stand between the two and play middle man.

'_Why did Dad always like him so much more,'_ he wondered to himself. When it came to discipline, they both got equal shares. But when it came to who got the cooler toys and who got the most praise for a good grade, it was always Cole. Even when they had both aced a test, albeit Dylan was four years younger than him and thus had much easier material to learn, Cole had gotten a pat on the back when all he got was a distracted "Oh, that's great, son". Even for a biased favorite son preference, Dylan never did find it all that fair.

And what he found the most ironic was the fact that the son that was the favorite was also the one who did most of the arguing.

Was it really so wrong for him to feel this way towards his father? The way he saw it, Cole was only doing what Dylan had wanted to all along—stand up to their father after all he had put them through.

"So what do you have to lose?" Cole smiled something that left Dylan's hair standing on end. "Here you are on death's doorstep, you've got a loaded shotgun in your hands and your two social washout sons are right in your sights. You can spend your last moments letting out all your anger by shooting us or you could shrivel up on the floor and use your last tolerable breaths apologizing to use for being an asshole our whole lives."

The brothers could see the choices bouncing around in their father's eyes. His labored wheezing sounded slightly faster, so two did his heart they assumed. Cole grasped Dylan by both arms to minimize his exposure to the gun when he saw his father's trigger finger twitch.

"._..stay behind me, dylan_," he whispered and held him tighter as he felt his little brother trying to resist in fear.

_BANG!_

"Cole!"

The sound was ear shattering in the empty house with no carpet, wallpaper or furniture to absorb any of the volume. Cole groaned as his breath was knocked clean from his lungs and stumbled backwards, only remaining on his feet by Dylan pushing against his falling weight. Brother and father both gazed in awe as the electric man straightened himself and brushed the gun powder from his shirt and face. Not a single shell pieced his body or hit his petrified brother behind him. The most damage they had done was tear a hole in his shirt or, at most, left a hardly noticeable bruise.

"Well, it's got more kick than a nine-millimeter, that's for sure."

"Cole..." Dylan stuttered a few times before he could find the right words, "how did you do that?"

"You really are bullet-proof," muttered Father as he lowered his giant boom-stick hopelessly.

"Yeah," he complied. "And if you still care about Dylan at all, you'll be happy to know he'll be safe with me."

Dylan's chest fluttered. Only moments ago did he seems set on abandoning him and now he was taking him with him to...wherever he was going. Something told him that he never did intend to leave him, but as long as he was going to be in better company than their father or Mitch in a small apartment he was fine with it.

Suddenly, the Old Man erupted into a flurry of coughs and wheezes, dropping the firearm and falling back against the wall of the hallway. Dylan came out from behind his brother and approached him, the other follows closely behind.

"I ain't going to apologize for doing my job as a parent, it was both of you that failed me. He coughed again. "But I will say I was never more proud of you when I heard you were saving people. My son, a superhero." And again. Dylan looked to Cole as if he had said the most absurd sentence in the world. "But then I hear you're killing people for fun like i's a game. It always seemed like the moment you gave me a reason to respect you, you disappoint me all over again."

"I don't live to please you, Dad. That's all I did until I left college. Even then I was still doing what people told me to do when they told me to do it. You have no idea how good it feels to be my own man after letting other people run my life for me."

His father lowered his brows as much as his weak body could muster. "And I suppose you're going to teach Dylan how to be a cold-blooded killer?"

The other returned the glare. "I'll teach him how to survive."

All the father did was laugh an amused, filtered chuckle. "Here you are talking about teaching when your mother told everyone you were a teacher. She was so ashamed that you were a bike courier, all she could do was lie to her friends."

Cole only continued to frown at him. "I know. And I know about that picture in your wallet. You couldn't wait for me to marry her, she was like the daughter you never had. She'd make up for all the disappointment we caused you, wouldn't she?"

His father's scowl disappeared and soon became a hint of shock. "How did you know?"

He coughed roughly many times before he got less of an answer and more of a tease. "A little bird told me."

Finally, at the end of his storm of wheezes that slowly quieted into silence, he fell limp and his body ceased to move. Cole said nothing for a moment, however his expression was much less distraught than his brother's.

The electric man approached the now still body and stared into his icy eyes before digging around the pockets of his jacket. In one of the inside pockets he had found his father's wallet. And inside of that he found a picture of himself and his late girlfriend Trish. The two of them were smiling sincerely and saw that gleam in her eyes that he knew he'd never see again. It was a still of a much simpler time, when everything was normal. He then slid the photo into his backpack before he was able to reminisce anymore than he wanted to.

"Are you happy now, Dylan? You'll never have to worry about him again."

Dylan did not want to answer honestly. After all the resentment he had harbored for his father, he never wanted it to go so far as to see him die. He was an angry drunk and a strict parent, but that didn't mean he deserved to have his life taken away by whatever pandemic was sweeping the county. And the way that Cole acted so heartless bothered him too. He could already tell he had changed in a way that put a bad taste in his mouth, it was like the death of someone close to him didn't bother him at all.

And despite his judgment of character whispering that he was about to get himself into something he would not like later, he still felt that same security around Cole that he always had. Especially when he just managed to survive a hit from a shotgun and even dust himself off like it was nothing. Which brought him to the question that would dismiss the topic of their father. "Did he say you were a superhero? As in you have superpowers?"

"You must be the only person in the whole country that doesn't know that. The news won't shut up about how I'm a terrorist-"

"Wait, you're the terrorist they kept talking about? The one with the electric powers?"

"Among other things." Dylan did not doubt this claim in the slightest as he had already seen the proof that he wasn't any regular person anymore. But now he was left with so many questions. He wondered if everything he had heard on the street was true, whether or not he had been blowing up cities and killing people for sick kicks.

Somehow he didn't doubt that either. From what he had seen of his brother in the past few moments of their first reunion in over a year, he didn't even want to know.

Cole started to walk out into the living room. "Look, I actually have somewhere to be so let's just-"

Suddenly a crackled of sound and lights lit up the front door.

Cole grabbed Dylan by the arm and ducked back into the hallway. A military scout had opened fire into the house, intending on eliminating both Conduits. His time had run out, and the humans had started to respond the the outage of the UAV. He had been caught without the ability to use his powers, but that did not mean he was helpless.

"Damn..." the older brother cursed as he darted his eyes around the house.

"You've got the army pissed at you?" The other blurted, "what did you do?"

"They're scared of me, and for good reason..." he trailed off as he spotted the shotgun on the ground. "Grab that gun, it's still loaded."

"You expect me to shoot a soldier?"

"I expect you to buy me time," said Cole as he clasped his hand onto his deceased father's face and to Dylan's amazement electricity began to flow from his corpse into his brother's arm.

His distraction didn't last long as the soldier came around the corner and opened fire. Dylan dove for the weapon, took aim and fired with sheer adrenaline rushing through him. The soldier stumbled backwards, but was not harmed due to his bullet-resistant vest. Dylan fired again out of surprise of how quickly he had recovered.

Finally Cole had drained all the neuroelectricity that had remained in his father's corpse. It was not much, but it was enough for one jump. He spun around and in the blink of an eye vanished in a roar of flame with Dylan's trembling torso in his arms.


	3. Chapter 3

Hey guys, welcome to chapter 3! Thank you for all the input I have been getting about the story, I'm glad to see people are interested in reading this. The fourth chapter should not take very long, I already know what I want to do and graduation is in less than 2 weeks.

As for the Karma Choices, I still need a lot more people to vote on my profile for whether or not y'all want to see them implemented. 5 people isn't exactly the greatest representation of the community's opinion as a whole. So head on over to my page and press that button! Once there is a pretty clear pattern, I'll let you guys know.

As always; Read, Write and Review! And a little disclaimer, I do not nor have I ever taken part in the practice of parkour, so excuse me if some of you do and I get that section completely wrong. ^^

* * *

Chapter 3

When the surprisingly painless embers eventually died from their skin, the MacGrath brothers were met with the sound of collective rejoicing.

Dylan looked up to find a large group of people cheering and clapping with smiles on their faces. Cole sat up on his knees and breathed a relieved sigh. Not only had he managed to keep himself and his little brother alive in a moment of absolute vulnerability, he had never seen so many people happy to see him in his life.

"Boss!"

"Oof!" The head Conduit suddenly found himself jerked up off the ground and into a tight embrace by Rush.

"You're alive! I went back to look for you and I thought you were dead!"

"Come on, Rush," Cole rasped with his torso compressed. He was personally surprised that Eddy's scrawny build could even lift his own taller, stronger frame. "Me, dead? I thought you'd know better by now."

The younger man smiled even wider and set him back down, after which Cole took Dylan by the hand and pulled him to his feet.

"Who are all these people?"

"They are my band of traveling misfits," Cole explained. "And every one of them have superpowers."

"So, you're like their leader or something? How did you manage that?"

"Because I gave them their powers. And by that standard, you're a misfit too." Dylan looked down at himself and his hands as if he had mutated into some horribly ugly creature. "Your powers will come in time and I'll teach you how to control them. But for now I have a few things to take care of."

He put his fingers to his lips and gave a loud whistle. Dylan was surprised to see the dog that had come to his aid emerge from the crowd and heel at Cole's side.

"Hey, that's the dog that was there when the bomb went off..." Dylan looked at Cole was a sarcastic look. "It's Superman's dog, isn't it?"

This question made Cole chuckle, which caused Rush to look at the dog with an interested face and it returned a twitch of the ear. "His name is Richard and he's actually not a dog. He's only in that form because he injured his leg trying to bring you to me...and three legs are better than one."

As he explained, Richard went to sniff Dylan's leg before seeming interested in tracking a scent. He moved left and right weaving in and out between the three Conduits following his nose.

"I'll admit, he's a good actor," Dylan couldn't help but smile knowing it was a grown man's mind in a dog's body.

Once Richard had found his end point to lead him back to Cole, he let out a howl. He was immediately hushed by the leader before shooting a point at him with his paw.

Cole glared at him as his brother asked "What's he pointing at," and Richard glared back.

"Sometimes his borrowed instincts kick in and turn him into a brainless animal," he stressed the last part of the sentence as a warning to Richard, who growled back as an answer. He ignored this and digressed. "Like I said, I've got things to do. Richard will give you the tour, show you how we do things around here. When you're done, come find me. I shouldn't be too hard to find."

With that he turned and entered the mill of Conduits like God parting the Red Sea.

Dylan looked at Richard who looked at him back with a flat expression. After a moment, the man in the dog's body put pressure on his gimp leg to test out the pain. Once he convinced himself it was bearable he changed his form into his normal human self.

The boy looked up speechless at the tall, intimidating man. Just by looking at him he could tell Richard had seen things in his life that Dylan never hoped he would and quickly wished he was still as cute little Labrador.

He swallowed nervously before sticking out his hand, trying to start off on the right foot with such brutish man. "Uhm, nice to meet you. I'm Dylan M-"

"I wouldn't tell anyone your last name here," said the man in a gruff voice. "I can name at least one person that would exploit the fact that you're his brother."

"...Oh." Dylan let his arm droop. "Is...is that one of the rules here, or is that just your personal opinion?"

"The only "rule" is don't piss off Cole. It's common sense. He's the strongest out of all of us and no one is stupid enough to get the brunt of his power turned on them." Richard turned and walked in a path that led around the crowd. Dylan, after snapping himself from his thoughts, jogged to catch up to him.

"That's a little vague, isn't it? He's not a very negotiable person before he gets ticked off."

"Just do what he says and don't cross him. I'd imagine he'd punish anyone using their powers to harm other Conduits either. You'd better be taking notes, kid, I'm not one who enjoys repeating himself."

"Sure..." said the young MacGrath as his eyes scanned the crowd. Some milled calmly with each other while few sat with still bodes as if they were nurses at a patient's bedside. "Mind answering what a Conduit is?"

"Conduits are just people with super powers. We get our powers when a certain radiation activates a special gene in our bodies. And the probability of having this gene is about as much as getting struck by lightning..."

"So, is that number higher lately considering Cole has lightning powers?" Dylan gave a weak chuckle as Richard stopped to give him a sharp glare. Obviously he wasn't one for humor either. "Right...so, when do we get our powers?"

"You already have your powers, the problem is you can't control it. I'll be blunt with you; you are a very powerful Conduit, you've already almost killed some of us."

Dylan wasn't surprised that he'd be the type not to mince words, but almost killing people? He thought he was over-exaggerating considering whatever injury he has sustained was already reduced to a minor limp. "But what are my powers?"

"As far as I know, you are able to cause earthquakes. Whatever else you can do you'll find out soon enough when Cole and I teach you how to use your powers." He glanced at Dylan who suddenly carried a look of meager disdain. "So you better get used to seeing me, because I won't go easy on you because your last name is MacGrath."

Soon they came across Julia and Torrin. The former was down on her knees with her hands clasped together while the other stood nearby watching contently.

"Who are they?"

"Julia Abraham and Torrin Davis," Richard answered. "She is able to manipulate plants while he controls water. They work together to supply us with food when we don't have enough from scavenging."

Dylan watched as small buds grew into stalks of corn and pea pods as well as trees that beared apples, oranges and peaches. It was like watching a vegetation documentary in smooth time lapse. However he noticed that the plants struggled to mature until Torrin let loose a steady stream of water from his hands to quench the roots, after which they bloomed incredibly quickly.

The boy did not know which he found more impressive—the plants on steroids or the almost enchanting glimmer of light reflecting off of the spontaneous water particles. Whatever enchantment he found was quickly extinguished when Torrin turned and his eyes found his own. Until now Dylan thought he had already made the acquaintance of the "Friendliest" of the Conduits. He quickly realized that there were more lions in the den than he felt comfortable.

"Tamed your wrecking-ball yet, Blaine?" Torrin mocked, crossing his arms. Dylan returned the heated stare, knowing he was referring to him. "I should hope so if you don't want to end up in your own grave."

"So far no more problems," the other man answered, impressively holding back any sharp words he'd love to say. "I appreciate your hand in our rescue."

"If it were up to me I'd have left you there. But seeing how I'm not the dictator, I had no choice."

"That's thoughtful of you," said Richard sarcastically. He took Dylan by the arm and jerked him away with him to end the conversation.

"Hey, wrecking-ball," Torrin called. Dylan looked back spitefully to see him toss a bright red apple to his hands. "Welcome to the herd."

"Uh...yeah thanks," he answered emptily. He continued after Richard refusing to look back. "Do you think it's poisoned?"

"Like I said, no one is stupid enough to piss off Cole. To him, all of us are significant and irreplaceable. He may not look it, but he does look after us. The best was to describe it is he's our shepherd."

Dylan twirled the fruit in his fingers as if looking for a worm of other parasite. "What's that guy's problem anyway?"

He took a bite as Richard answered, "Let's just say it's arbitrary between him and I. Don't be surprised if you see him getting on Cole's bad side."

"I'm guessing he's the one you meant when you said someone would exploit my name."

"Yeah," the other complied.

As they continued to walk, Dylan noticed someone within the group awakening from their unconscious sleep, almost like rising from the dead. He quickly recognized the brown mop of hair and and the maroon jacket the person wore.

"Mitch!"

He tore away from Richard's supervision and rushed up to his dazed friend Mitchel floundered about half-awake, barely able to mutter Dylan's name.

"Mitch, come on, wake up." Dylan slapped him a few times across the cheek. After the fourth time he finally came to.

"Dylan!" He gasped. "It really is you!" He jumped up and hugged him tighter than he dared before. After all, he did just live from a bomb and he had just woken up to find his best friend alive and well. "What happened? All I remember is that a bomb went off."

"I don't know everything yet, but I know we've got super powers." Mitch looked at him blankly. "I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I just watched a little girl grow and apple tree in, like, twenty seconds. Here..."

He held out the apple to his friend, expecting him to take it into his hands. But he was recovering from his sleep much slower than Dylan had and instead leaned in and forced his teeth into the tough peel. Dylan had to keep both hands on the fruit to keep it from falling out of his hands or sticking to Mitch's mouth as he righted back up and chewed.

After he swallowed he looked into his friend's eyes saying "It's better than hospital food."

"Yeah, but this isn't the hospital so I don't need to be hand-feeding you anymore." The young MacGrath shoved the apple into his hand.

Mitch laughed before replying, "Y'know, those were probably the best parts of your visits. The nurses only treated me like a rotting vegetable." Then he took another bite.

"Alright, listen up," Cole's voice trailed above the group. Everyone quickly hushed and stilled, something that still took Dylan by surprises. "The food's all ready, so help yourselves. As always, we can thank Julia and Torrin for their hard work."

He clapped his hands together and the rest soon followed. Dylan and Mitch were slow to join. The two Conduits receiving the attention seemed to put off the applauds like they had been given enough already.

"Afterwards, I need all the newest Conduits to join me for orientation then we'll be on our way. For now, eat up. It'll take a day or more to get to the next city."

Dylan looked up to Richard and said, "Wait, we're not staying?"

"No," he replied. "We only stay long enough to convert more Conduits and find supplies and then we move on to the next destination."

"But I don't understand. What exactly are we doing?"

The animagous Conduit looked at him strictly before answering, "You'll find out at the meeting." Then he turned and joined the others in the crops.

Now Dylan was very concerned. Richard was obviously not one for talking but so far he had not gone tight-lipped when he asked a serious question.

Suddenly he didn't want to know the answer, a sense that was reinforced when he looked to Revere City in the distance. Even from far away he could see the numerous columns of smoke billowing from within the city and some buildings that had been leveled or smashed.

Then he wondered to himself how powerful he really was to have caused that damage, in his sleep no less. Or maybe it was only a fraction. Now he was sure it was Cole who was responsible, the only person that seemed to put a quiver in Richard's voice just in the description of his strength.

But he decided to wait to hear it from the horse's mouth before jumping to any conclusions.

He looked down at Mitch and held out his hand. "Come on. You need the food more than I do." He pulled him up as their palms clasped together and assisted him to the plentiful source of nourishment.

As Dylan helped him hobble, he noticed that Mitch had not coughed once, that his body as stronger than it had been. Had he been cured or was that only a moment of reprieve from his body's shock to survive?

"Alright, easy does it." Dylan leaned Mitch against the shady apple tree and the other struggled to keep balance. "I guess you'll want more than just apples, huh?"

"A little of everything would be nice," Mitch smiled back.

"Will do," answered Dylan as he scooped up a few red fruits and doubled back to hand them to his friend.

Then he made his way to the orange tree where he found a measly single citrus laying on the ground. Dylan frowned as he picked it up and stuffed it in his hoodie pocket wishing he had enough to share between the two of them. He looked up when he felt an orange skin plop on top of his head to find Eddy lazily munching his food sitting on a branch.

"Hey, uh "Rush" was it? Mind tossing a few down for me?"

"Sure, newbie," Rush said after swallowing, "whatever you say."

Dylan then found himself with a juicy peel smudged on the front of his jacket. He flicked it off before saying sarcastically, "Very funny. How about some sustenance with that peel?"

"Don't you know the peel is the healthiest part?" Dylan only glared at him. "I'm just pulling your leg, newbie. Here you go."

Suddenly the tree rustled and disappeared behind small puffs of smoke and in between those puffs came flying oranges. Dylan scrambled to catch them as they fell—three or four of them-and stuffed those into his pocket as well. "Thanks!" These he returned to Mitch.

Dropping the fruits at his friend's feet, he noticed a small group of Conduits sitting in a circle chatting with one another. Each of them had half of a fuzzy brown coconut in their hands and were drinking milk from the hollow centers.

"Hey, where'd you guys get those?"

"Across the corn field," one of them answered. "Water's nice, but it doesn't have the Calcium a healthy diet needs, y'know?"

"Why didn't Julia plant all the trees together? Seems a little out of the way."

"She's just a kid. And honestly, she doesn't really know how to use her powers." Dylan asked the man what he meant when it seemed she could use them just fine. "Well...how can I explain?"

"She doesn't understand that they're _her_ powers," another took over. "She thinks that angels are responsible for everyone's powers. Everyone has their own special angel that they pray to and they answer."

"So she only asks her "angels" to grow her plants, but not where," Dylan deduced. The other confirmed and wished him luck on finding what he was looking for.

The corn field was too tall for Dylan to see over and so he could not see any tree with coconuts on it. But he decided to go through to the opposite side and grab some husks on the way.

As he sifted though the towering stalks of corn he rifled through them to find the most ripe husks he could find. It didn't talk long for him to realize that getting lost in a corn field was actually a lot easier than it sounded, and that's being generous. When he emerged he expected to see an entirely new ecosystem of fruit-bearing plants, only to find Mitch and the Conduits he had asked for assistance.

"Get lost?" Mitch snickered as Dylan dropped the corn he had been carrying.

"It's like a fun house in there," replied the young MacGrath. "I'm gonna try again."

Once again he entered the forest of husks, this time feeling as if he were only going in circles never to find an end. It was when he found a crow pecking at a torn-open husk that he finally felt relieved.

"Hey Richard, I don't mean to interrupt your dinner but can you show me the way to the coconuts? I keep getting turned around."

The bird crooned its head and cawed, fluttering its wings to get above the crops. After looking around it cawed again as a beckon and flew towards Dylan's destination.

The boy raced to keep up with the bird, glancing up to see if he was still on track while shoving stalks out of his way. It was more like dense brush than crops. Dylan had no idea how much was left until the edge and he could barely see as he zoomed past green and yellow blurs.

He heard Richard caw once and saw him zig zag above, something that confused him as to what its interpretation could be. His answer was made clear when he collided with another body and tumbled to the ground on top of said person.

"Ow. Hey, careful," said Lucy Kuo beneath him.

Dylan scrambled off of her, shocked by the intense chill he could feel through his jacket just by touching her. "I am so sorry, miss," he sputtered as he took her hand and lifted her to her feet, once again surprised by how cold her touch was. "I was following Richard to the coconuts and I didn't see you there."

"It's alright, no harm done," Kuo replied, dusting herself off.

There came a series of caws from a circling seagull above their heads, about the closest thing to a laugh Dylan figured his keeper was capable of producing. He scowled and looked back to Kuo.

"I'm Dylan, I'm new here," he stuck out his hand, hoping she'd shake it even though her icy skin still disturbed him.

"Lucy Kuo," she did take his hand and he continued to smile past his discomfort. "I'm Cole's assistant. And from what he's told me, you two are close for a couple of brothers that haven't seen each other in so long."

Dylan frowned and scanned her eyes trying to find a lie to tell her.

"It's alright, your secret is safe with me. Whether or not you want to expose your identity is up to you and Cole."

"Oh..." Dylan's voice faded, finding he had one more true ally in the new strange environment. "I appreciate it, Miss Lucy."

"Please, call me Kuo."

The boy nodded. "Alright. Kuo."

There came a gull's caw right next to his ear, which startled him, as the changeling grasped onto another stalk.

"You'd better go," said Kuo, hiding the faintest hint of laughter. "Richard can only be patient for so long."

"Right. Thanks, Kuo." He took off after the gull, weaving in and out between plants being careful not to run into anyone else.

Richard quickly led Dylan to the trees populated with coconuts as well as banana trees. The bird skimmed across the ground before shifting into a small monkey. Dylan followed Richard to the base of the tree as the simian scurried up tot he nuts.

Watching him made Dylan recollect on a day when he was thirteen. The police had brought Cole home for trespassing and in some cases, destruction of property when he had started getting into parkour. He had gotten bored of the trees, dumpsters and fences in their neighbor hood and had moved out into the city. Dylan could tell he had been running around in the sewers because he would come home smelling worse than a skunk and take a shower before their parents found out. Those were nights that sharing a bedroom was certainly a downside.

A few months later he had managed to get their parents to agree to let him go down to New Marais with his best friend Zeke Dunbar and his family for his birthday. It wasn't Zeke's birthday. And his family didn't go with them. It was all just part of a half-baked lie so that Cole could continue his Urban Exploration or whatever he called it to sound official and get out of trouble.

Well, whatever "barbaric foolishness"-said father—he did certainly made an impression on little Dylan. He always asked Cole to teach him but the answer was always "no". It was never because Cole didn't want to take the time to teach him, it was because he didn't want Dylan to get as acquainted with the police as himself.

But here the law did not apply. This was no one's property and the only cop for miles was Torrin. Richard pulled a nut off the tree when he reached the top and tossed it at Dylan's feet. When he reached for another, he stopped him. "Wait, I want to try getting it myself."

The monkey frowned impatiently.

Dylan took a few steps back before running, jumping and grabbing at the tree. He quickly found that gravity was greater adversary than Cole made it seem. He tried again but came to the same result. He gazed up at Richard who still glared grumpily at him. He reached for another coconut deciding that Dylan was just a childish kid with useless gleaming-eyed ambitions beyond his reach.

But he stopped again, halfway in motion. Dylan heard the footsteps and whirled around, flushing almost immediately.

"Still haven't given up wanting to learn?" said his older brother smiling coyly at Dylan's embarrassment.

He helped his little brother up, who kept his eyes averted to hide his shame. Cole looked to Richard up in the tree and said, "Go back to your business, I'll take it from here."

The simian's blank stare gave no clue to his relief, but the sudden change into a black crow and fluttering back into the crops was answer enough.

"There," finalized Cole. "Privacy is a little hard to come by lately."

Richard wasn't the reason Dylan's ego had been bruised, but he knew that any intimacy the brothers wished to share would need to be had alone. For now the other Conduits, with the exception of Kuo and Richard, needed no hints of their relation to one another.

"Now," Cole brought his attention back to him. "Parkour isn't something you can just get out of bed and decide to do one day...at least the more advanced stuff. Your body's got to be conditioned, you've gotta be agile, have good balance."

Dylan frowned. He wasn't quite on par with the description.

"But that's if you're not a Conduit," said Cole, that perked up Dylan's ears. "Your body's been reinforced. You may not realize it yet, but you have more stamina, strength and resilience than ever."

He took a few steps back and waved for Dylan to stand clear.

Then he took off in a full sprint from a stand-still. Then he lunged with all the momentum in this forward motion and grasped the trunk and went straight up. Once he reached the top he tore a nut off the tree and toss it into Dylan's hands.

Dylan was amazed. He had sealed the tree faster and more graceful than Richard, and he was a monkey.

"You've just gotta learn how to use everything you can output. Including your powers."

Then he jumped and Dylan's heart thumped like a bass drum. He plummeted down over two stories straight to the ground. When he landed the downward force brought him to a squat before he stood up, unharmed.

Dylan blinked a few times. "That didn't hurt?"

"Not a bit. My muscles can stand more trauma and reconstruct themselves faster. Falling's not a problem anymore."

"What's the highest you've jumped from?"

Cole paused to calculate it in his head. "Give or take thirty stories."

"Where did you get thirty stories to jump off of?"

"If I told you it was a tower made of garbage you wouldn't believe me."

Dylan stared at him quizzically. He assumed that being a superhero came with right to the weird.

"Anyway," Cole returned to the previous topic, "first lesson; center of gravity." He ushered him over to the same tree. "Just because gravity is always trying to pull you down doesn't mean you have to go with it."

He planted one foot on the trunk, pushed off with the grounded one and clung to the tree, in Dylan's envy, stationary.

"Nothing up my sleeve, no powers, just friction because of my center of gravity." His position was similar to a vertical squat, the majority of his body weight keeping his staggered shoes in place. "If I'm unbalanced, gravity would be stronger than the friction and I'd fall." He leaned back, purposely losing his balance and caught himself on the ground.

Then he signaled for Dylan to try. He followed his motion and did his best to mimic him. Struggling to find his balance, his foot drooped and raised as if he were unsure if he were going to fall or not.

"Come on, Dylan. You're not even three feet off the ground," said Cole teasing him about his insecurity.

Dylan grounded himself and rubbed his hands on his jacket. "You make it look easier than it really is."

"It can be easy. You just can't be afraid to fall. You don't need fear, you're a Conduit."

"I'm not scared," Dylan argued, "I just can't-"

"Try again," Cole interrupted, not wanting to hear excuses. "This time keep both your feet on the tree and only use your toes."

Dylan sighed and rubbed his hands together. He didn't care how many times he insisted he had powers. Until he did something some extraordinary out of a comic book he was still a normal seventeen year old kid. And a fall from the top would probably break something.

Once again he grasped the trunk and planted his feet, noticing that some of the bark was sturdy enough to be capable footholds given the appropriate balance. When his hands slopped, scurrying to find a new grip, he felt his brother's palm on his back that coerced him to lean in and find his upper balance.

It was amazing what a reassuring hand could accomplish.

It was something Dylan had not had for a long time. It was the same touch he felt when his father lashed out at him before they suddenly vanished along with his brother. It was Cole's way of saying without words "Trust me. I'm here. It's not worth a second thought."

There was only one other person he shared that gesture with, that nurse he had as a girlfriend, Trish. When she was around Cole seemed to be a completely different person. If his parents weren't gawking at his "lucky catch" he would personally toss Dylan out of his room for privacy's sake. Most of the time Trish would try to spare him by saying three is company. This worked maybe two or three times.

'_Whatever happened to her' _he wondered.

Dylan looked to him pleasingly after he took his hand away, proud that he had accomplished the task of handling gravity.

But when he saw Cole's eyes there was a small hint of disappointment. It was as if a purposely forgotten memory poked it's mocking face of of a deep darkness.

"Cole?" Dylan attempted to remove him from his aloof stare. "How is this?"

His eyes as red as his shirt darted over him. Dylan shivered. Were his powers really worth losing his familiarity? To him, perhaps. Cole never did care about what people though of him, except for maybe their parents. But being one of only two people Dylan knew from his old life, the touch of his hand seemed to be the last sign of his brother he remembered.

"Looks like you've got it," he answered at last. "Now try it without my help."

Dylan let go, took a few steps back wiggling his gingers free of pain, then gave a short run before perfectly mounting the tree.

"Good job," he complemented, genuinely smiling. Whatever he had remembered seemed to be back in the past. "We probably don't have much time before someone comes for seconds, so let's skip right to the fun part."

He took a spot on the trunk beside his brother, leaving enough room for free movement.

"Think of it like climbing a ladder—right arm, left leg, then the opposite." he demonstrated by taking a few upward strides before sliding back down, tearing the bark. "Only difference is you need to adjust your weight going up. Keep your weight centered so that the friction of your toes keep you from slipping and you can easily pull yourself up."

Dylan craned his head upwards at the daunting height of the tree. If he made it to the top it would be an impressive feat.

"Come on, I'll do it with you," Cole assured him. "Ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be."

"Alright, here we go. Right..." The two ascended with their right arms and opposite legs. "...left." Dylan followed his lead, Cole continued to chant as they climbed, falling quickly in time together. Eventually he found a rhythm and Cole's encouragement was no longer needed. "Great, you've got it!"

Dylan's confidence rose with every step. At last he was achieving what he has spent years wanting to learn. Something that seemed almost impossible he was now succeeding in literal strides.

That was until his foot slipped.

A piece of loose bark gave way, taking him by surprise in his pride. His heart jolted as he slid downward, clamping his hands against the rough bark.

Cole darted his hand and caught his olive hood as It flourished up against the fall. It was all thanks to this that Dylan was able to stop.

He grasped the trunk in the tightest embrace he could. If it were a stuffed animal the head could have popped off.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Dylan heaved, finding his footing again, "thanks, Cole." He pried one hand from the tree and saw his palm and fingers had been cut in a few places. He seethed at the sting of pain.

"Do you want back down? There's only a few feet left."

The trembling MacGrath glanced up again. His goal was only a few arm's lengths out of reach. "I've come this far already," he declared.

Then he started again, fighting past the pain in his hands and chill in his spine. The few feet felt like several miles, but when he took the fuzzy brown coconut in his hand and tore it off all the sweat and fear seemed so worth it.

"I made it," Dylan smiled down at Cole. At the same time he realized how high he had really climbed. It may not have been a thirty-story building, but it was a start.

"You see? Nothing to it. I bet you couldn't do that yesterday."

This made Dylan think _'What else couldn't I do yesterday?'_

Cole had been so insistent that Dylan had wooden up with otherworldly abilities. Maybe his body knew about the change before he did. IT was certainly true that he did not have the most optimal physical ability the day before.

"Alright, last one," Cole sighed, checking for any on-lookers. "Getting down..."

That gave Dylan an idea. He had been preaching about how falling was harmless and fear was unnecessary. He felt that there was not time like the present.

Whatever Cole was saying went in one ear and out the other as he pushed off the trunk of the tree. Now he let gravity take him instead of fighting against it. The fall only lasted a few seconds but the rushing air and the sinking feeling in his stomach drug it out for ages.

And when he hit the ground, he felt almost nothing. The fabled shock-absorbers were true, all he felt was the equality of jumping off of a bed.

But it wasn't the lack of pain from the fall that surprised him. It was the thin fissure that shot across the ground when he landed. No ordinary person could have created a deformity in the earth when falling from any height.

Then he noticed that the pain in the right hand was easing instead of intensifying for being pressed so hard on the ground. When he glanced at it he was amazed to find that the layer of dirt on his skin was—without exaggeration—becoming his skin and reconstructing his palm and fingers, repairing the cuts completely.

It was true, he _was_ a Conduit. Everything Cole claimed must have been true. Not that he ever doubted him, he only wished to see the powers Cole had guaranteed he had.

"So how does it feel to be a Conduit?" Dylan did not have an answer, however it seemed that Cole did not expect and answer. "I was going to let you climb down but that was worth discovering your powers wasn't it?"

"I, uh... don't know what to feel," the younger brother admitted.

"In that case, let me show you something to look forward to." He reached over his shoulder and pulled the rusted Amp from his back. "You might want to step back a little." Dylan did as he was told. "More...little more. That's fine."

Then he jumped, charged his arms with red electricity and raising the weapon above his head. And when he hit the ground he whipped it to his side and all the electricity he built up erupted in a diverging wave, causing dirt and grass to fly up from the earth.

Dylan looked on impressed. Had he been inside the radius of the shock wave he'd have been a one-hundred and forty pound projectile.

Cole stood and sheathed his Amp. "See that crack you made? It might not look like much, but eventually you'll be able to make tens of those, rattle the ground, _bury_ people by doing what I just did. And then you can improve on it, won't need a jumping point—just a tap of your foot."

Dylan did not know how to respond. He was given mixed messages. Cole spoke as if it was a wonderful thing to look forward to, but his voice was laced with something despotic, hungry. He did not know if he wished well for the sake of Dylan having powers or the eventual scope of destruction he would eventually be able to create.

In the loss of feeling neither ecstatic nor disgusted, he simply smiled a little and said, "Cool, can't wait."

The other didn't seem to accept this as an appropriate response, but let it go and changed the subject.

"You've made good progress for your first day but you're not done yet. After you're done eating I'll start eh demonstration." He made another quick scan around. "Get back to your friend, you've kept him waiting long enough." Then he turned to leave.

"Sure. And Cole?" He stopped and half turned. "Thanks."

The elder only nodded and vanished into the crops.

Dylan was about to leave when he decided to grab one more handful for the trip back. He climbed up the adjacent tree with bananas at the top, patting himself on the back that he did not need Cole's coaching to do so. I twas much easier the second time around knowing falling had no consequence.

Once he grabbed a bushel he considered climbing back down. However he agreed that he had been gone too long and jumping was much faster. This time when he landed he manged to put a dent in the ground and get his hand stuck in a crack. He was easily able to pull it out, but the lack of control he had of his powers disturbed him. Torrin had poked fun at him for putting Richard in a life threatening position, and then Richard himself blatantly warned he could easily kill someone if he misused his powers.

So far his new abilities had done more harm than good. The only beneficial thing he could do so far was heal himself with dirt and survive a fall. He found them annoying and honestly, after hearing the tone in his brother's voice, terrifying. He had only been awake an hour and already his powers were raging out of control. What would he become as he got stronger?

He imagined something like a giant rock monster that shook and broke the earth with every step.

Who would look forward to that?

Apparently his power-hungry brother.

He took one last forlorn glance at the scar in the earth he had created and made his way back to the other Conduits.


End file.
